If you can’t see the above video, click here, or watch it directly on YouTube.

Today I’m sharing a video that changed my life. I watched this in February 2009 when on a weekend break in Cornwall, and as I saw Joe Pine’s TED Talk on The Experience Economy, it resonated deeply within me because it explained what I had spent all my working life doing: staging powerful, compelling experiences.

Shortly after, I purchased the book and read it when I took a group of interns to Romania for a week in April 2009 (whenever I read it now, I think of Romania in an instant.) A few months later when researching Joe a little more, I saw he was on LinkedIn and I sent him a thank you message for how it had changed my life and my business. Joe responded, and from there we kept in touch. I was fortunate enough to meet Joe in December 2009, and Joe was very helpful with hooking me up with Teemu Arina, who spoke at Like Minds in Helsinki. Such is the power of Social Media! (BTW Joe is now on Twitter.)

My Takeways

I could and have spent a lot of time talking about what I learned from this video, but my main takeaways are:

1. Good and Services are commoditised. They are everywhere. If you want to be unique and remarkable, you need to offer an Experience.
2. An Experience is a customised Service. This provides the starting point to start staging Experiences.
3. Staging Experiences doesn’t make them inauthentic. In fact I say that the more you prepare for people is the more that you actually value them and care about the experience that they’ll have. Case in point: Like Minds is highly prepared to deliver a compelling experience to every participant – because I care about people learning and connecting.
4. Authenticity is two things: being true to yourself, and then being true to what you say you are. I wonder how many businesses fail on BOTH!
5. Whatever the level of Authenticity of your offerings, whether Fake-Fake or Real-Real, you can embrace it and make it work.

Joe has co-authored two books with James Gilmore that combine the thinking in this video. I would highly recommend that you purchase both Experience Economy and Authenticity (affiliate links), because they have given me an incredible way to understand economic value and the levels of economic offering. If you like anything about what I do, most of it has some root in these two books – either because I learned it there, or have found that I was already doing it but it was described there.

Your Leading Thoughts

• Do you offer Experiences? Or rather, what Services do you offer that you could customise into Experiences?
• Where does your business lie on the Authentic Matrix?

If you can’t see the video above, click here, or watch it on Vimeo.

I watched this video this week by Scott Stratten (regularly known as @unmarketing), which is an hour long presentation on what Social Media is really about: social – a.k.a. relationship.

You know I don’t do this often – so given that I am posting this with little more than what I think, I thoroughly recommend you watch it.

My favourite bits:

1. The opening story that Scott tells. N0 matter how advanced we want to get with Social Media (you know, my frameworks and all), we have to remember so many businesses still are getting the most basic customer service horribly messed up.
2. Automated tweets and other Social Media fails because it is pretending to be present - and the most important thing about Social Media is the reply – which you can’t do off an automated tweet or cross-platform status update. Very good insight here.
3. His example of getting people to understand how powerful Social Media is (9:30 in.)
4. “Social Media doesn’t change the fact that relationships take time.”
5. “People still use videotapes… Holy monkey nuts.”
6. Scott’s admission of denying digital sales of his book in order to get better New York Times Best Seller List ranking, as they only count physical sales. Authenticity is a big thing to him – which I like.
7. Every line of information you ask for on an online form decreases the chance of someone filling it from 10% – 30%. (Wow.)
8. His story of learning that the volume-play from the early Twitter days was just over the top and doesn’t work. (And now understands value is where it’s at.) He now regrets following everyone back.
9. Increase people knowing you, liking you and trusting you (always good to hear again.)
10. Create great content on Twitter. In other words, craft useful 120-character tweets, rather than just sending updates. (This is what I call being an Active Authority.)

And yes, I so liked the keynote that I pre-ordered his book (my affiliate link – commission for sharing this with you

Your Leading Thoughts

• My question for you – what is your favourite bit, and why?

Enjoy.
Scott

But if your blog is REALLY your home, then the implications are deeper than just bringing them to a place where you can show off your content in order to get your ego stroked.

Chris recently pointed out a few ideas when discussing “Rethink Your Web Presence” – which I’ve taken and extended to what I think are the deeper implications is your blog is your home. Consider that:

1. When people go to a diner party, they ask “who here is like me?” It is a safety thing. When we design our church experiences, we are always aware that when people enter a church room (or networking room, or any room where there are unknowns), they immediately ask “who here is like me?” – it is a safety thing. Faces are a great way to virtually show that people here are like you – to grant Social Authority – which is what Facebook’s social plugins are doing.

2. People want to know, “why am I here?” You need to show/tell them what is happening and what is next, as any good host does. Sign post me – lead me – guide me. Again, this is safety, because I can relax if I know you are taking care of things. If you bring me to your blog and you say upfront it is about selling then I’m cool with that if I know it upfront. But don’t trick me.

3. People want to talk to you. You don’t invite someone to your house and then don’t entertain them when they talk to you. This is why I can’t stand people who ask “What do you think” and then don’t reply to their comments, as I discuss here. Being a good host is about drawing conversation out of people – for help with this, read Sy Taylor’s view and Robin Dickinsons’s view.

4. People want it to be about US, not them or you. A good home and a good dinner party is social (if you don’t know what that means, read this excellent peice by my latest intern.) You don’t go to someone’s home in order to stroke their ego, hear all about how wonderful they are, and then be ignored when you want to talk to them. I don’t want to be sold when I go to your house, either.

5. Diaries. When are you coming over next? If you’ve provided a good experience, how are we taking it further?

In reality, I wonder if most blogs are actually more like a restaurant, or to be honest, just a sales front.

Beautiful home photo courtesy of solitaire-mladjenovic_n

Last Friday I posted a video about the gripe I have with bloggers who tag “What do you think?” onto the end of blog posts in order to make them social. What followed was a really great discussion in the comments section that I want to highlight and then add some more ideas to mixing pot.

I have four issues that I’ve drawn from the comments you made, and bolded the main points, as this has turned out to be a longer post than usual.

Why Comments Matter

They matter because that’s when blogging becomes social. When I look at where I’ve come in the last year, I can direct much of it to the comments on this blog, and the follow discussions on Skype and face to face. I always say that connections trump community, that is, a connection with someone who is engaging two-way with you is far more valuable than someone in the community that just blindly ‘likes’ or ‘retweets’ your stuff on Facebook or Twitter (and the offline equivilents of such tokenism.)

Forget about audiences, attendance and readership. It’s about participation. (The first words are one way, participation is two way.)

Comments matter because that’s where ideas are shared and adapted, and then those adaptions are documented online. I’m not into getting comments for vanity and ego. I’m in it because I want participation in order for us to ACT and DO.

Someone that I respect who doesn’t ask “What do you think?” only to not respond to the comments is Seth Godin. People have been up in arms about Seth’s no comment policy (he has them switched off), but there is a refreshing authenticity to this: he doesn’t want them and therefore doesn’t allow them. I can handle that.

The Issues

For me, there are two angles on my gripe. The first is the poor question of “What do you think?” and the following poor comment engagement. The second is the poor comments from readers such as “great post” and “I agree”, which are mindless responses to generally what was a mindless question (“What do you think?”). Based on Friday’s comments, here are the issues that we discussed:

1 – Readers don’t know what to comment

Chris Hall said in the comments:

“I think that for many people comments on blogs are actually quite intimidating. I suppose what I’m saying is that we all have to aim our parting remarks as we conclude our posts at the relevant audience or debate.”

The thing here is that the readers don’t know how to comment, often because there is no direction on how to do so. We read loads of blog posts about writing better blog posts and getting more comments, but who is writing about being a better commenter? (Will get to that a moment)

Chris answers his question in the same sentence – we need to help commenters with what to comment. Randy Dunning agreed with that the answer to the fear of commenting is “all the more reason to ask focused question” which leads us to the second issue:

2 – Bloggers don’t know what questions to ask

For all our talk of community and curation, I think the skills of facilitation are really absent in a lot of bloggers and on a lot of blogs.

This is what Josh Chandler brought up, and I agree with him:

“I find myself getting to the end of an article and finding I’ve constructed my side of the opinion, but not exactly formulated primers to get people thinking as they read through the post.”

The solution here is to practice – and this isn’t something you can read a blog post on Mashable for. Get good at offline engagement and then transfer it. Start valuing people – I mean really valuing people – individual people. Look at what you’re writing and then ask what you’re very smart, informed, expertised readers can add to the thoughts you’ve started, and then get specific about it.

3 – The community focusses on Blog Posts, not Blog Comments

I can tell you right now that every Social Media update newsletter, feedburner feed, retweet, Facebook share and the rest are all for Blog Posts, not Blog Comments. On one hand that’s fine because that’s what we lead with, but seriously, when was the last time you really engaged in a comments section and were retweeting it because of the comments? Like I said, my comments have made me and taken me to where I am at the moment – I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

Robin Dickinson pointed to the undervaluing of people being part of the cause with this:

“As you say – it’s all about people. And the secret to really honoring people is to truly engage with questions rather than lecture with opinions. Yes, have a balance – but online the balance seems to have weighed very much in favour of ‘me-cast first’, and then ask a token question.”

Totally. Anybody who is any good at hosting dinner parties knows this. You put others first, rather than inviting people over to your house to talk about yourself the whole time.

Sy Taylor then brought up the point of using technology to stay in touch with comments. I’ve actually done you a diservice in not explaining that I use Disqus because you can subscribe to comments using it. When it comes to taking your community and developing connections out of it, I know of few better ways online.

I think the fact that we emphasise the blog post first, and then the comments are our second ‘tag on’, cannot just be left to “well thats the way that the technology was developed.” I think it is because:

4 – We don’t understand Social

Social is all about people and relating with them (not to them). The word comes from the Latin for companion. Dictionary.com posts 12 definitions of the adjective of Social, the first 8 being:

1. pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by friendly companionship or relations: a social club.
2. seeking or enjoying the companionship of others; friendly; sociable; gregarious.
3. of, pertaining to, connected with, or suited to polite or fashionable society: a social event.
4. living or disposed to live in companionship with others or in a community, rather than in isolation: People are social beings.
5. of or pertaining to human society, esp. as a body divided into classes according to status: social rank.
6. involved in many social activities: We’re so busy working, we have to be a little less social now.
7. of or pertaining to the life, welfare, and relations of human beings in a community: social problems.
8. noting or pertaining to activities designed to remedy or alleviate certain unfavorable conditions of life in a community, esp. among the poor.

Where is that on most blogs?

The whole thing about Social Media was that it is relational and in its simplest form, is two way. So what happened to two way when blogs are just one way – the author broadcasting?

I hate to promote myself at this point, but the Social / Broadcast Matrix helps tidy so much of this up and provides a clear way to understand what is social and what is not. I really do wish SmartBrief or Mashable would break out of their usual rubbish and post that framework because I really think it would help clarify a whole bunch of mess and make us realise just how unsocial a lot of ‘social media’ is.

Social Media, once again, are tools built around relationship. Wikipedia:

“Social media is a term used to describe the type of media that is based on conversation and interaction between people online.”

I’m just going to go and ahead and say it: in my opinion, any blogger that invites comments but 1. doesn’t ask meaningful questions, and 2. doesn’t engage with meaningful responses, 1. just doesn’t value their readers, and 2. is an anti-social blogger.

Bloggers like this are reproducing more and more egotistical megalomaniacs who are blogging for fame under the guise of Social. A note to them: either be like Seth and others like him and be straight about it and tell us what you’re here for, or stop using the community that I love so much and put so much into for your selfish gains.

The Main Point

Blogs that don’t ask meaningful, thought through questions and don’t engage in meaningful responses don’t value their readers and are anti-social.

Your Leading Thoughts

I need to wrap here before I launch into other things I have to say, but let me finish with this:

My friend Chris Brogan uses the analogy of a blog being like a house, that you invite people back to when you meet them on Twitter or Facebook. At your house, you have your content, etc.

My question for you is:

• Do you invite people to your house to then just talk about yourself, and reply to nothing your guests have to say?

Photo courtesy of Benjamin Ellis, at Like Minds 2010

If you can’t see the video, click here.

In this video (filmed by Andrew Davies, and full of The Office jokes), I stumble through attempting to explain the idea that Facebook’s new Social Plugins are a powerful step for our post modern epistemology – in other words, the way that we get information.

In the Broadcast Age, based upon a modernist society, information came from one trusted source that informed our opinions and governed our understanding. In the Social Age, based upon a postmodern society, information is like a web, with multiple nodes that continually feeding and receiving information. You can read more about this in yesterday’s post.

In our Social Age, the webs of information with the most authority are those that are the most cohesive. Four scenarios to help explain what I mean:

1. Saying that your product is great is a Broadcast tactic – you are saying it about yourself, offering a structured reason why, but it’s ultimately modernist.
2. If you have a web of information about you, drawn from various sources, but many of those sources conflict and are perhaps hard to find, you have a not so cohesive web.
3. If you have a web of information about you that is easy to find, but it’s all positive, it may be cohesive, but it is also not genuine, because you’re deciding what gets seen.
4. If you have a web of information that says your product is great, but you aren’t controlling it and instead showing what people say, then you are more authentic and genuine, and therefore more cohesive.

What I’ve always liked is ASOSReviews.com, which shows everything everyone is saying about ASOS on Twitter – whether good or bad. This instills trust and confidence – and the impressive high positive sentiment they have tells me that the people, the nodes, are pleased with ASOS therefore creating a more cohesive web of information.

What Facebook are doing, as I try to explain, is link the conversation and semantics – the nodes – from around the web to provide cohesive webs of information. This is what the internet is actually supposed to be. The internet is a not a medium for out data – the internet is our data.

Robert Coaldini, by the way, has 6 weapons of influence that I think contribute to making a more cohesive web: Reciprocity, Commitment and Consistency, Social Proof, Authority, Liking, Scarcity. I’d certainly say Facebook’s Social Plugins are heavily based around these.

I’m sure there’s far more here that can be discussed, but I’m just really stoking the intellectual fires and hoping we can talk this through more. Let me know what you think.

This got me thinking. If you can broadcast social, then that says something about the channel that is used, and the content that is delivered through the channel. Is it the case, then, that you can have social content delivered through a social channel? Or can you have broadcast content delivered through a social channel?

Taking Pine and Gilmore’s Authenticity (affiliate link) and their Real Fake Matrix as inspiration, I’ve thr0wn together a first draft of a Social Broadcast Matrix. Lo and behold:

First, Some Definitions

People seem to be having problems with defining Social Media – which is to be expected in an emergent industry. I think if we see Social Media as a progession of Broadcast Media, then that helps. Consider:

Broadcast is one way. It is static. It does not change according to new information.

Social is multiway. It is dynamic. It changes according to new information.

Broadcast channels and content are therefore one way. They push, and by definition, a broadcast goes from one point out to many points. Social channels and content are multi way. They push and pull, and can adapt according to the pull. As opposed to broadcast, social starts from many points, and goes to many points, whilst changing as each point contributes.

Broadcast channels and social channels are mutually exclusive, as are broadcast content and social content. However the channels and content are not mutually exclusive – in fact, they marry together – meaning we can have a hybrid effect, where by the Channel is Social, but the Content is Broadcast.

Let’s get into some examples as we look at at point of the matrix:

Broadcast Social

This is what started my post last week. Imagine you are talking about Social Media to a group of people. The content is Social – it is not only about Social Media, but the content itself has been formed through crowd sourced efforts (as all Social Media content is being ultimately created in a share collaboration that spans the whole Social Media sphere.)

When this content is delivered through a keynote address, despite the content being social, it is actually broadcasted. The keynote is a broadcast – one point to many (as I describe in Person-to-People), and the keynote structure does not change according to the audience. It is Broadcast Social.

Or consider Reality TV. The content is social – it is dynamically generated, crowdsourced, and made from many points. But when we watch it on TV, this social content is being broadcasted to us. It’s also the same with Talk Radio.

Even blog posts are social content that is broadcast. But that’s controversial…

Social Broadcast

Consider a company that wants to take it’s existing broadcast content – press releases, for example – and push them on a social channel. This is Social Broadcast, and it is essentially the misuse of Social Media.

What else falls into this bracket? Facebook Pages that are used by organisations that push out status messages linked to a blog. Twitterfeeds that publish RSS feeds into a Twitter stream. They are both broadcast content delivered through a social channel.

This can also extend to panels at an event. A panel is a social channel (multiway, dynamic, push and pull), however if the panel have decided to broadcast their content, then we have another misuse of Social Media.

Broadcast Broadcast

TV, magazines, radio, and even brochure websites are broadcast both in channel and content. Nothing new here!

Social Social

When both the channel and the content are social, we enter this fourth and final realm. Social Networks like Facebook, when used by the average user, are Social Social. The whole site (channel) is continually changing according to the content. Remove the social content, and the social channel doesn’t exist.

Or consider Unconferences. The channel is again continaully changing according to the content. What people want to discuss, gets discussed, and the channel morphs accordingly. Remove the content, and the channel doesn’t exist. This is similar to a 21st century rendering of ‘the medium is the message, but it has now become, in the case of Social Social, that: the channel is the content.

Overlaps and the Divide

Let’s go back to my assertion that blog posts are Broadcast Social. In the model, I then list blog comments as being Social Social. So then where does a blog fit, as a whole, in this model? Or where do events fit in this model, given that I’ve put panels and keynotes in separate quarters?

I believe that this model reveals a few core axioms that help us answer these questions:

1. None of these dimensions (Broadcast Social, Social Broadcast, Broadcast Broadcast and Social Social) are wrong or right. They just are.
2. Each of the dimensions can assist each other.
3. The combined effect of these dimensions renders the media as either Broadcast or Social.

You’ll notice that through the model there is a orange divide the sections half off as Broadcast and half as Social. The combined effect of a media’s dimensions (some of which are Broadcast Social and some Social Broadcast, etc) positions it either as Broadcast or Social.

Let’s take events as an example. Whilst their are keynotes that are Broadcast Social (which as per axiom 1, is not wrong or right), there may also be an unconference element, which is Social Social. This means the event is Social, and not Broadcast. However if you remove the unconference elements, and there is more broadcast activity than social activity, we find we have a Broadcast event.

Blogs can also be looked at in this way. The fact that there is Broadcast Social (the posts) and Social Social (comments) renders the blog as Social.

Further Thinking

I’ve got a lot of thoughts about where this could go – but given I’ve already written a little too much – let’s just bullet point them and add to them in the comments:

• What are the benefits to each dimension? (i.e. Broadcast Broadcast grants you direct reach with little room for detractors)
• What are the negatives? (i.e. Social Social requires a lot of leadership can can enter mob rule)
• How can an entity use each of these dimensions to create a multi-dimension event, providing the benefits of each? (like an event)
• How does an entity move from one dimension to the next? (i.e. TV moved into reality TV. Is this a pattern for others?)

Already having typed these, my mind is whirling around with ideas – some around the Nestlé issue and how that is a result of Social Broadcast. Would this of happened if Nestlé had just stayed to Broadcast Broadcast?

If you’ve got this far, then go one step further, and put down some ideas into the comments below so we can form this together.

Cheers,
Scott

One of the mantras of Social Media advocates (of which I’m one) is the flatenning effect. It’s what I noticed a year ago (and wrote about here) when I was able to speak directly to directors, CEOs, managers and decision makers without getting asked “And who are you?” by a secretary before being refused to be transfered to the boss’ direct line.

I guess what it means is that you don’t need a business card – Social Media gives you a direct line.

And in this way, yes, I feel that the world is the flattest that it has been since Copernicus came on the scene. But still, things – and people – are not all equal.

I should point out that I don’t even think all people are equal. Yes, all people have equal rights and responsibilities towards other people, but we are certainly not equal. Firstly we are not equal in our make up. The whole thing of us being diverse and different means that we have different strengths that compliment each other and multiple our combined effectiveness. The second way we are not equal is in the value that we can impart. Yes – we can learn something from everyone – but we can learn more from some people than we can from others.

The trouble is that online we are quick to talk about this flattening thing – this equality, democracy and place where “no one is an expert” – but when it comes to reality, these ideals are not actualised. I’ve seen so many people who profess the notion of flattening on Twitter, but when it comes to putting steak on the plate – when you want to talk to them or get them involved in something - they certainly want to be on more than an equal footing than everyone else. They demand special treatment, special slots, and special time so that they don’t have to mingle with what they might as well call the ‘proletariat attendees’. They are very specific over who they will and won’t spend time with even though they profess a belief in a “flat” Social Media landscape.

Andrew Keen (despite all the purposely provocative talk) says very well that authenticity is the new power. Having spent time working as a television producer and also as a model, I know that everything in those industries is staged. So I often wonder whether this authenticity is staged, too. I remember Ashon Kutcher telling Opera (on the show were @ev  set her up with Twitter) that Twitter meant “any person can be a celebrity” and that “any person’s voice could be as powerful as a newspaper” – Ashton of course was acting here and reading from the Social Media script – it isn’t true. In fact, the moment the word ‘celebrity’ was used I un-followed Ashton because I just am not interested in garnering celebrity from Social Media and Twitter, and despite what he says, that is what he’s using it for. His own words betray him.

On the other side of the coin, what really impressed me this week was talking to the keynote speakers at Like Minds. I had phone calls with them all, and I was astounded at how ‘flat’ they really were. They had no special requests regarding who they would and wouldn’t talk to. They are all thrilled to be running Like Minds Lunchtime Talks, hosting a conversation with 10 people they probably don’t know. Even when it came to the little luxuries like their favourite drink, room upgrades and the rest, they had no demands and were happy to for me to ‘do whatever makes it easiest.’ Chris in particular was so easy to sort out because he literally had no special requests, said he’d talk on whatever I’d ask him to, didn’t need time by himself, and just wanted to ‘get to know and meet new people.’

With all our speakers, both keynotes, panelists, moderators and our bloggers, this common trait is strong. Lloyd Davis, founder of Tuttle, said something very profound: “Tuttle isn’t for everyone, but it is anyone.” Amen. I understand now that people-to-people means that while we understand what we are doing is not everyone’s cup of tea, and that we can’t see everyone or speak to everyone, we are for anyone, and have time for anyone.

The Leading Question

• Do you believe in a flat Social Media Earth? Or rather – what in Social Media is flat, and what isn’t?
• How much of Social Media Authenticity is staged?

There’s a great discussion going on right now at my friend Robin Dickinson‘s blog on “Building Relationships: A Question of Quality Over Quantity” (go and read it!)

Today I’m hoping we can pick up on a key topic that has risen from the comments on Robin’s post, mainly about what I guess is easiest to describe as Friendship 2.0. We’ll look at what’s wrong with the current idea of friends, how we misplace confidence in community, and how we can move forward with genuine connections that get things done.

To start, you’ll notice that I call Robin my friend. Truth is we haven’t met, and only known each other since June, but through Twitter, Skype, and commenting on each others blogs, we’ve spent many hours talking and thinking new things through – in order to create action. You’ll see a lot of what Robin and I have been talking about at Like Minds in February.

One of the things that we’ve both started doing is asking “Leading Questions” at the end of our posts. We both believe that comments aren’t for praise, or an indicator of your ‘community’, but for you to actually refine the content with one another and move the ball forward. They are about relationship and collaboration, not to look good. We talked about some of this last week on the Community vs Connection idea.

Out of this thinking, Robin asked the question, with regards to building relationships, “In your opinion, what makes a high quality relationship?” There’s some great discussion still going on, with some valuable insights, however I wanted to bring the discussion here to look at a subsection of building relationships, namely in the sphere of digital relationships and Social Media.

The Flaw of Faux Friendships

I don’t have the Oxford English dictionary out right now, but I think a good definition of a friend is someone with whom you have an exchange of life. A relationship where each person grows by what the other supplies. This might be news, updates, heart-ache, joy, advice, mentoring, marriage, parenting, hive-fiving – the point is, there is some kind of exchange, whether large or small, frequent or infrequent, balanced or unbalanced.

There was once a time that when you had little exchange – more of a knowledge of someone – they were an acquaintance.

Acquaintance as a word has now been rather outdated. As technology and the growth of our communities has permitted us to have more relationships, we have begun calling everyone we know as friends. Well, at least I have, as 26 year old Gen Y man. Furthermore, Social Networking has made friends out of people we don’t even know. I don’t mean friends as in you haven’t met them but talk to them – I mean a friend with whom your only interaction has been the acceptance of a friend request. You don’t know them, and you don’t write on their wall or tweet them. But they are your ‘friend’.

Maybe we should dub these as faux friendships – where there is no exchange of life.

Perhaps I am being a little extreme here – but a large number of people follow and are followed by faux friends. Now sure, this is the wider ambit of community – but this isn’t compatible with Seth Godin’s Tribes idea, which paints a far more emotionally involved picture of community. I remember when Seth released the video I’ve posted above on the meaninglessness of high numbers in Social Networking. People were shocked, but Seth was right. They’ll follow you, but they won’t exchange life with you.

I would say that there are many of these faux friendships out there, and it’s a product of the Social Media movement’s high content turnover and large focus on high volume sales and numbers.

And this is fine. But let’s just get it straight – these people aren’t my friends, and they won’t collaborate with me.

And for me, I’m not interested in an audience. I’m interested in a team of people working together to bring about change.

Cultivating Deeper Connections

So, how do we cultivate deeper connections in our Social Media spheres, and across an increasingly more digitally connected world?

I think that the speed of the hi-churn, hi-turnover, hi-volume, hi-noise world is by nature conducive to faux friendship. Fast information makes for fast food makes for fast friendship. I would therefore put it to you that connections – the type of connections that collaborate, work together, exchange life, have meaning, grow by what the other supplies and make things happen - these connections require a slowing down, and a slower, more considered pace.

How?

• Well to begin, scale the levels of communication. Go from tweet to DM to commenting to email to Skype voice to Skype video to flying them over and shaking their hands. I think that each level is worth 10 of the below level – so a phone call is worth 10 emails, in terms of connecting you.
• Get on the phone, Skype or meet. Text pales in comparison when trying to convey personality.
• Give it time. I don’t mean laze around. I mean give time to the relationship: frequently talk and talk for a while. Take time to talk, even if it’s just ‘talking’. Slow down. At the same time, keep the frequency up. The people that I collaborate at the highest level with, I talk with daily.
• Openness. Authenticity. This means not only being open enough to share your life, but open enough to receive life from others.

I’ve been thinking about this blog recently, and realising all the more that I what I want to foster are connections with people, with whom together we can achieve great things that make a great difference. I’m ready to do the above with you guys – let’s talk.

Actionable Summary

• Social Networking has created faux friendships – where there is no exchange of life.
• To achieve greatness, you must cultivate connections.
• In this fast paced Social Media industry, real connections are slow and steady to counteract the fast and fragile.

Leading Questions

• How do you marry the above with getting your message out there to help people? Or is this just a layer of vanity?
• How do you treat comments? As a place to discuss, or a place to get praise from people?
• Social Media is fast – too fast for comprehension – as evidenced by the amount of crap out there. How are you slowing down?

Today we’ll look at the second case study, namely Pepsi’s decision to invest it’s $20 million Super Bowl spend rather into Social Media. As I said yesterday, I’d certainly recommend reading both ABC News’ article and Augie Ray’s article at the Forrester Marketing blog, as they both provide excellent analysis and further examples of other companies doing similar things. I don’t actually want to talk about Social Media here though, as they haven’t started the campaign yet – I actually want to focus on Cause Marketing, Authenticity, and, well, you can read the title!

Case 2:  What Is A Cause?

According to ABC News, “The Pepsi Refresh Project will launch on Jan. 13 with a Web site where people can outline their projects to refresh their communities to make a better world.” They continue, “Visitors to the site can start voting on Feb. 1. Pepsi estimates they will fund thousands of projects spending in excess of $20 million dollars and hopes to start a movement where others will begin funding community projects in the same manner.”

So what Pepsi are doing, from what I can see here, is not putting all of their redirected Super Bowl funds into Social Media. No doubt a lot has gone into the build, and a lot will go into the management, but the primary use of the $20 is to fund local community projects.

This idea of marketing through social change, cause and community is this Cause Marketing concept that I want to investigate. Whilst the idea of a ’cause marketing’ was identified in the 1970 as a more clearly defined non-profit and charitable cause, it has morphed into becoming a moniker for any gathering of community around a mutual passion or pain, where a platform is built for people to unite and thereby the product is seen as either the platform itself, or the facilitator.

To paint a picture, I think one of the best examples of cause marketing is the numerous ways that Churches today evangelise – by cleaning lawns, helping the poor, building up broken buildings, raising money. On the top level, Churches carry out these activities as a way to market themselves. By carrying out these activities, they show (market) to the onlookers that they care, that they are actively involved in the community, and that they are culturally relevant.

The second level of marketing is more subtle – by actually involving people in the activities, you market to them by providing a platform for them to fulfil their passion or elevate their pain. The aim is to move them towards brand advocacy – participation sweetens loyalty. If I’ve worked with you, with sweat, blood and tears, then I’m not likely to criticise you, am I? On the other hand, I’ll stand by what we’ve done together.

The keen, regular readers (hey guys, how are you?) will know that I’ve actually been doing this for years – most recently with Like Minds. By building a platform for people’s passions and pains I’ve marketed my consultancy, my Agency and my thought leadership, not to mention Like Minds itself. Whether people paid to come, or really got stuck in and helped out, I marketed to them all. It’s important to point out that this isn’t deception – you really are helping people, and providing them with what they want. I love nothing more than to work side by side with people, innovating and pioneering new things – I’ve just learned over the years how to do this better. The more pertinent question, rather than if all this is deception, is whether this is authentic.

What is Authenticity?

The thing is, when I look at Pepsi’s plans, I see a fundamental difference from my examples above. In the above instances, the platform is the product. But what in the world has Pepsi got to do with social change? That’s where the issue with authenticity comes in. I see it, currently, in two lights. Either:

1. The platform is the product, which means there aren’t strong authenticity issues – because you are being what you are, or
2. The platform is not the product, in which case, there are strong authenticity issues – because you are not being what you are.

I recently met a hero in the form of Joe Pine whilst he was in London. Joe’s book Authenticity (affiliate link) looks at some of these issues, but at the lecture he was giving that I attended, he touched on a very interesting thought I had forgotten. He suggested that in an Experience Economy, businesses face the issue of authenticity with regards to the experience that they deliver. Therefore, he went on to say, businesses need to begin rendering authenticity, in the same way that a service industry improves quality, or a good industry controls cost.

Now I know that’s a deep paragraph, and it would take a lot to explain – so I do suggest you read the book. But in a nutshell, Joe is getting at this idea of authenticity being a case of rendering said authenticity in the right light. How do you convey the right level of authenticity? Consider the whole ‘transparency’ debate – just how transparent do you want us to be? There will always be selectivity – not because I’m hiding from you, but I’m protecting you. You don’t really want to hear my toilet habits, do you? But you do want to hear my daily productivity habits. That’s selectivity. Furthermore, consider that no one is really authentic – even our language doesn’t authentically portray how we feel – how much more, then, are businesses often inauthentic?

Lets skip into February when Pepsi release the Pepsi Refresh Project. How is it authentic? Indeed, can they really truly care, whilst they are simultaneously doing this for profit? Then again, is their decision to plough $20 million into community projects evidence that they do care? Where is the line of authenticity here? It feels like a never ending circle, but I’m sure together we can come up with some answers.

What’s in Common?

The other challenge, when the platform is not the product, is that commonality becomes an issue. Pepsi drinkers, for instance might not be the most altruistic people on the earth, and therefor have little in common with the campaign. However, Like Minds attendees are interested into thought leadership, and therefore have much in common with my thought leadership. You see the difference – which when we carry it along, I come to the conclusion that:

It is easier to unite people around a platform that is a product, than a platform that is not the product.

Why? Because your audience partakes of your product simaltaneously as they participate in your platform.

Think back to the church example. If you are mowing lawns with a church, then are you participating in church – even if you aren’t a Christian. Why? Because as I said, when the church mows a lawn, the church is being what it is – church. Which means if you are mowing the lawns with them, then you are, in that moment, being one with them.

Pepsi’s inherent problem then, is that whilst people are involved in these community projects, they aren’t simultaneously partaking of the Pepsi product. Hey – they aren’t even participating in Pepsi’s brand proposition or brand values.

This for me seems to be a problem – there’s no relation, no commonality. Their probably are ways to find this commonality – but to be successful, doesn’t this require at least some brand values to shift towards this social model, in order for their to be more authenticity?

A Question of Connection

My final thoughts tend towards how strong a connection this type of campaign makes. We’ve yet to see it go live – and of course, given that it is about social change, I’m keen for it to succeed. I’m just curious about how they are going to execute this.

First, like I said earlier, I don’t see this kind of activity to be in line with Pepsi’s brand values. Second, Facebook will be the main draw with Social Networking (that’s where the audience lives) – so how will they tie that in, and get anywhere near a good participation level (given that the whole campaign is likely to be held on another site.)

I’m currently thinking about levels of participation, and this campaign strikes me as one that will require high levels. So who do they have on the ground? How have they tied people in already? You can’t create a campaign with high levels of participation, and hope it goes viral. You need to have prepared your sneezers well in advance.

So

So let me here from you. Specifically, I’d like to you if you think it’ll work – if so, how? Also, what are the implications with authenticity here? Authenticity seems to be very muddy waters, mainly because it is subjective, rendered, and never fully actualised. Let’s talk it through!

Photo with thanks to Thomas Hawk.

In case you didn’t know, the UK is experiencing, right now, one of the greatest Social Media case studies ever. The headline and subtext from the BBC is this: “Rage Against the Machine beat X Factor winner in charts: Rock band Rage Against the Machine have won the most competitive battle in years for the Christmas number one”

But the real headline here is this: that 3 months of prime time television marketing and audience engagement are beaten by Social Media.

Now, I’m going to try and say this all without too much waffle, but being such a landmark event, I’m going to make sure I fully unpack the case study, illustrate how things are changing, and also show off how my framework predicted this (hey, when you’re this right about something, you need to celebrate yourself, even if no one else will. It’s how you remain sane, right?)

Spreadability beats Reach

I presented a framework a while ago that illustrates how spreadability is increased the more ‘dynamic, home-made, personal relationship’ and less ‘static, factory-made, public relations’ a message is. The thrust of my argument was that word of mouth has always been about spreadability rather than reach – and whilst reach can get the message before lots of people’s eyes, spreadability gets the message into the right people’s mouths and in turn into the right people’s ears. This is important, obviously, because in order for people to spread the message, it needs to be in their mouth, not before their eyes.

I’ll share the framework in a moment, but first lets look at the facts of the case study and the associated stats.

The X-Factor 2009 took 17 weeks of primetime 1.5 hour Saturday and Sunday night TV programming (as well as spinoffs, etc), with an average of 13.9 million viewers per show and an average 45.9% of the viewing audience (from Wikipedia). Every Monday the papers were full of either front or second page news from the drama surrounding the contestants and the judges fuelled from a rumour mill designed by the world’s best (bar-politicians) to keep media coverage and reach as high as possible. The peak audience was for the final show, totally 19 million viewers and 53.2% of the viewership. The maths are that an average 13.9 million people watched over 50 hours of The X-Factor.

So certain had the tradition become that the X-Factor winner would be the UK Christmas number 1, that bookmaker William Hill was planning to abandon its 30 year tradition of betting on the outcome. Until as you know, some guy (Jon Morter, to be exact, who had attempted a similar stunt the year before) decided to push Rage Against The Machine’s ‘Killing In The Name’ through Facebook to be top of the charts.

Jon and Tracy Morter created a Facebook group and started promoting, and then made a back-up group due to some glictches that the main group on Facebook seemed to experience. There were also a number of ‘fake’ Facebook pages and groups created that made it hard to distinguish which ones were created by Jon. These two ‘official’ groups contained the latest news, carefully instructing people to not buy the single until the week commencing Monday 14th December, as well as warning people that “bulk purchasing will disqualify that entire purchase you’ve made form the chart count”. The tipping point, according to the The Guardian,was:

…helped by the comedian Peter Serafinowicz, who on 15 December urged his 268,000-plus Twitter followers to join in, and it snowballed from there. By the time Paul McCartney and former X Factor winner Steve Brookstein had pledged their support, poor McElderry seemed doomed.

When I spoke to Jon on Twitter he said that it was actually UK celebrity Phil Jupitus who first tweeted about the campaign to his 50,000+ following when he retweeted a request from a follower.

Their numbers, in contrast to the X-Factor’s mainstream medium reach, were almost 1,000,000 members when combining their two groups – however this does not include the members of ‘unofficial’ groups and pages. The Twitter hashtag, #ratm4xmas, was a trending topic for a large part of the week – however the TweetReach stats are very low: just over 12,000 (#likeminds had over 200,000.) What’s also certain is that none of these people spent an hour, let alone 50 hours, on consuming the contents of the Facebook group of page.

The numbers come down to this:

1. A reach of an average 13.9 million (peak 19 million) viewers, with over 50 hours of consumption, purchase 450,000 copies of Joe McElderry’s single.
2. Spreadability, of not even 1 million locked-in, sharing individuals, leads up who knows how many impressions, purchasing 500,000 copies of Rage’s single.

That fact that a Social Media induced campaign, that admittedly did get attention in the press in the sales week, beat the weight of an average 13.9 million people consuming 50 hours of ‘message’ over 17 weeks, is not only a case study, but the case study to illustrate the power of Social Media. I really am astounded that people aren’t making more of a song and dance about it because this is huge.

Luckily, here I am to make a song and a dance.

I’ve been writing about this for most of the last 6 months (a collection of links here), but a lot people kicked back against what I was saying. Now, we have the case study. I wrote, also a while ago, that personal relationship is the new prerogative over public relations, and that Social Business heralds the shift from managing people like machine parts in a factory process to developing people and accessing the potential they have to learn and grow. In quite a poetic sense, this really is rage against the machine.

Down to my Framework

So, it’s about time we got to my framework and just a lil bit of bragging. I put this together in September this year to illustrate how spreadability is increasingly more important than reach, as I said above (“whilst reach can get the message before people’s eyes, spreadability gets the message into people’s mouths”, remember?)

As per the image below, you’ll see that I place TV as the pinnacle of spreadability for a static and governed medium. However with a dynamic and guided medium, a far higher level of spreadability is achieved. Note that this is not reach, it is spreadability. Spreadability is not about the message getting to everyone, it’s about the message getting to the right ones. By taking hands off of governing the message, and instead allowing the community to guide the message, the message becomes dynamic rather than static, entering the realm of ‘personal relationship‘ as opposed to ‘public relations‘. Anyway, here’s the framework:

Why this guidance, dynamic, homemade, personal relationship talk matters is because it allows the message to take on multiple forms and therefore becomes more personal and more relevant to more people. Quite litterally, people can make it their own. Another word for this is ‘translating’ – the understanding that you need people who can take your message and translate into the right motivational language for the hive that they influence. It’s like taking your message that’s 2D and then making a a multi-faceted diamond, each different facet communicating the same message in a slightly different way to meet the needs of a slightly different audience.

When you look at the X-Factor campaign, it has governance all over it. Professional at the highest level, every bit of hype, buzz, drama and emotion is factory-made and manipulated to push the audience towards financial commitments (just how the audience can take multiple sob stories of how “this is my whole life” every week just baffles the mind.) It’s also worth pointing out that the X-Factor is incredible expertiential and itself a very good example of the personalisation and Glocalisation that is happening in marketing.

Meanwhile the Rage campaign is not at all professional, but it is personal. Then didn’t create a Facebook vanity-url, have any kind of branding or copywriting expertise, or even run some kind of strategy from a centralised website full of share buttons. But when you look at their Facebook group you see community. You see people uploading the videos that motivate themselves, and in turn motivate others. You see people pitching in ideas, feeding back on sales and numbers, and warning each other not to buy bulk copies of the single. Other than a small note on both presences saying “Jon and Tracy”, you’d never know who was running the thing – the whole message belongs to the community – compared to the X-Factor, which has 13.9 million average viewers, none of which are under any impression that the X-Factor could ever belong to anyone else other than Cowell.

I’d like to be able to pull apart for you the exact components of how the Rage campaign won, but the mechanics are pretty simple:

• The climate was one of some unrest about the predictability (and the factory-feel) of the mainstream. This helped the campaign tip, and for any Gladwell fans, illustrates the Law of Context.
• The song choice mattered. The mainstream had well oiled machine with vast momentum, meaning the Rage campaign song had to be provocative in order to get any kind of attention – which is was. This meant more was at stake and a more emotional response was provoked, meaning there was a higher chance of action.
• Converting passion into action happened. There had to be little inertia between joining the Rage campaign on Facebook and then purchasing the single – which there was in the form of digital download. This meant people could quickly turn their passion into action, and buy the single in a few clicks seeing as they were already sat at their computer. This probably wouldn’t of worked if people had to go and buy the single instore.
• The campaign secured the right kind of online viral status through the above points. What helped it become viral was the totally homemade feel, and complete lack of branding, vanity urls, professionalism, etc. This makes it even more newsworthy, and more in line with the renegade spirit that it attached itself too.
• The community was pretty tight, as seen by the high degree of commenting on wall posts on the Facebook page and group. This signifies self-moderation by the community. At this point, information travels very quickly between the community and subsequently out of the community. The fact that any action taken inside the group or page comes up on the users’ newsfeed means the message was continually being spread to their friends even if they didn’t intend to be do so.

So

In the end, Simon Cowell purportedly offered jobs to Jon and Tracy, but Jon says that haven’t received any offer (as far as they know), but have spoken to Simon on the phone. What if Simon Cowell has offered them the job? Wise move? What do you think? Do you think this kind of thing can be reproduced by corporates? Or does big business lack the authenticity and personal relationship to pull off not only viral campaigns but movements like this?

What lessons can be learnt here?

Let me hear you comments below.